Amateur Climate Forensics

I admit I am not a scientist, I have no special expertise in botany, or physics, or paleontology, or chemistry.  In fact I am woefully ignorant of science.  But I can see.  And what I see is very, very strange.  I do not recognize the landscape I have known all my life any longer.

I can remember when I was a teenager taking a trip along the Kancamagus Highway across New Hampshire.  It runs through a deep long valley cut by the river, with steep mountains rising on either side.  Oh the glorious colors!  It was just as beautiful and intense as snorkeling in St. John, back before the coral reefs were bleached.

So keep in mind that the trees now are not at all what they should be.  Those shriveled brown and falling leaves should be brilliantly colored, firmly fastened to their branches until frost (current temperature as I type, at 8:20 pm, is 60 degrees F).

The leaf above is a random weed I don't recognize.  But it so resembles the watermelon leaf, no?

I found a few stunningly beautiful images on Sunday, when I went to visit the Smart Smokin' Hot Brat, who was in urgent need of a sequined sheath, for a Gatsbyesque '20's costume gala, with skating club friends.  And how appropriate, almost inevitable, for Princeton - so how could I refuse?

I was on campus only a couple of weeks ago, and the pace of deterioration is breathtaking.  Breathtaking in the sense that, it is so frightening I can hardly breathe.

But the rest of you, go along and don't worry!

Following is a series of trees in town and on campus, and various other plants.

Above are the leaves of the bush with the purple berries.  It has the odd juxtaposition of older, darker leaves, with abrupt new growth, lighter in color, veined, a little frantic perhaps.  More on that further down.

Above is a corner of the famed Palmer Square with a very large tree that has bare branches, the sure prelude to a terminal condition.  

The young, recently planted trees are in no better shape than old trees.

This weeping cherry is going bald, and the leaves are lacking chlorophyll.

I think this is a viburnum - upon inspection, the edges of the leaves are singed.  And of course, they are falling on the ground.

A beech losing leaves, and those remaining thus far.

These bare trees are magnolias.  They must look magnificent when blooming in the spring but I doubt they will in 2010.

The few leaves that remain show the stippling from pores that are damaged.

A copper beech whose leaves are tipped with brown.

Below is Prospect Street, where the Eating Clubs are located.

Approaching the trees, it becomes evident that they aren't turning fall color - the leaves are fading and scorched.

On the right is a large sycamore, and here are samples of the leaves, those that haven't already fallen off, with increasing levels of damage:

Above, stippling.

Above, brown spotting.

Above, a specter of doom.

It's Rush Week.  I feel so sorry for the students.  Most likely, none of them has a clue that their future isn't going to resemble their expectations in the slightest.  I worry incessantly that when  people finally come to understand that our world is undergoing seismic (literally!) adjustments that aren't going to be the least pleasant, for anybody, no matter how rich, everyone is going to just go berserk.  I worry about anarchy and marshall law and rampant nuclear explosions.  In a way, I want people to recognize how destabilized our environment is, so we can start to address it.  But I also feel that it is so overwhelming, that the vast majority of people, if they do comprehend it, will just freak out!

More trees that almost maybe seem like they are behaving autumn as usual, and more leaves that demonstrate they most certainly are NOT.

I mentioned a few days ago that these sorts of conifers (spruce?) are suddenly turning yellow the last couple of weeks, and that I expected them at this rate to be bare by the end of this winter.  Well, I cannot believe how fast they are turning.

Now from dying trees I am going to segue into peculiar reactions.  Different species - and sometimes specimens within the same species - display different responses to the increasingly toxic environment they inhabit.  One is a spurt of growth.  Another is an overabundance of seeds, cones, or flowers, because the plant is throwing all its energy into reproduction rather than just growing larger.  So I've seen a number of seeds I never have before, especially on trees.  Many trees that are genetically  programmed to live for centuries only feel the need to reproduce infrequently.  So here are some anomalous examples of a few plants I've seen recently.

Some wisteria leaves show the familiar mottling from the interference with photosynthesis, but these leaves are astonishingly PURE white!

The ivy is turning all sorts of abnormal hues, but it also is a frequent example of mini foliage.

The cascade below is another example of recent mini new growth, of a different color than the earlier leaves.

These ferns are truly mini, compare them to my keys, and the bricks.  The biomass is shrinking, which shouldn't be a surprise.  Individual leaves are smaller, branches are thinner, trunks are thinner, the tops of trees are actually shorter.  Think, a starving person, losing weight.  Also, I saw the fox again tonight and he was the skinniest fox I ever saw.

Above is the original seed formation in which I found the divine Flying Spaghetti Monster, who I now worship, with abandon.  To my humiliation, I discovered two of my daughters have known about FSM for years, when I thought I had made this remarkably clever discovery!  Oh well, they didn't know about Blingee, so perhaps I'm not completely decrepit and useless.  Below is the FSM tree.

And now, I see FSM everywhere I go.  These edible mushrooms, known as puff-balls, I used to pick, slice, dip in egg batter and fry.  I could regularly find them as large as grapefruits.  Now they are mini, and, dare I suggest, also an apparition of the FSM???

A final freak.  Happy Halloween.

On my wanderings in Princeton, I actually came across one of the now elusive, once ubiquitous, black squirrels!

(with clumps of fallen oak branches around him).

A Revelation

I am now a convert! After years of futile godless searching for any meaning to life, I have at long last found the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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Then and Now

This is a little series of photos taken in August juxtaposed with pictures of the same plants a couple of days ago. By August, just about every leaf on every plant or tree was showing unmistakable signs of poisoning from toxic greenhouse gasses. This snow on the mountain went on to turn completely brown and shriveled.

Then in the last month it put out new growth. Many trees and other plants did so as well. The new growth is spindly, weak and thin, with abnormally long spaces between leaves. Even more peculiar in this case, the snow on the mountain new growth no longer has the light green and white markings that make it such a pretty ground cover. It is all green! Don't ask me to explain, I am not a botanist. But I bet it has something to do with the composition of the atmosphere, and the leaves' ability to photosynthesize, since that is what determines the coloration.

This is a close up view of one of the new leaves, all green but showing the dappled effect that indicates an inability to produce chlorophyll.

This is a remnant of the original growth.

This peony leaf taken a couple of months ago has the characteristic loss of vigor in between veins.

Which has proceeded unabated up to the present date, on the same plant.

Discoloration from gaseous impairment on the delphinium, which has only just started to bloom, quite late.

Now many of the leaves are crippled yellow...

...tinged brown...

...or utterly defeated. And the leaves of Lily of the Valley, in six weeks or so, have gone from seriously impacted to disastrous. This is not frost damage! We haven't been anywhere close to frost. This isn't disease, or insects, or too much rain, or not enough rain, or too hot. This is from toxic greenhouse gas emissions.

Wonder what your lungs look like? You, your loved ones, your children are all breathing in the same witch's brew of pollution these leaves are bathed in.

Explosive New Blog Debut!

Credo and Screed - and you thought by 2015 it might be safe to go home again...

The Real Ugly Of It

One of the most absurdly ironic parts of "The Age of Stupid" were those segments depicting the long struggle between a young, sweetly earnest wind turbine developer, with one crotchety old farmer as an ally, against the outraged denizens of an English village. Oh sure, the citizens admitted they were concerned about climate change - but the wind turbines should go somewhere else, because they're ugly!! United, they defeated the proposed wind farm.

And then along comes this article, about Mont-Saint-Michel and the chorus of protests against wind turbine installations there, because they're ugly. Now in all honesty I have to confess I was once of the opinion that they were too unsightly to mar the view of the coast, anywhere, because I love the ocean, and the beach, in their natural beauty (in other words, not anything remotely like the Jersey shore, which not only looks hideous, but smells foul). However since I have come to understand that the alternative is inundating said coasts, and islands like Mont-Saint-Michel, with rising seas from filthy energy production, wind farms have become beautiful to me.

And besides, removing oil from the tar sands of Canada and coal from the mountains of Appalachia is far uglier, not to mention destroys far more habitat and species. And that's without even considering the pollution from burning oil and coal, and the people and vegetation that die as a result. Why are people so stupid??

Sorry but fair warning, this is going to be a grim posting. Nothing but thin pines and deciduous trees.

These pictures were all taken on the first day of October, a day when the leaves should be starting to turn from rich green to luminous colors of gold, vermilion, aubergine, magenta, and flaming tangerine. The tops of deciduous trees should still be full and dense.

The pine trees should be green and solid. The day was mostly overcast, which makes the pictures lack saturated hues, but still suffices to indicate with stark clarity the silhouettes of leafless trees.

You can see more sky than leaves in most crowns.

And in almost every conifer, so many needles have fallen off since this time last year that you can see not just the trunk but all the way through to the other side. That is NOT normal. The privet hedge in the foreground is pretty pathetic too.

I can remember from when I was young, say around 40 years ago, raking up fallen leaves at the end of October to make a huge pile which we placed beneath the wraparound porch of our house in Ipswich for the annual Halloween spookhouse. Unsuspecting trick-or-treaters didn't realize that from the point of entry to the jump off at the back, the distance increased due to a sloping terrain from a mere 2 feet of steps to about 10 straight off the edge to the ground. So when we terrified them off the back end of the porch, with costumed monstrous threats and horrible menacing gestures, they went into a dizzying freefall, which was cushioned by that pile of leaves. Ha ha! How we relished their shrieks of terror!

Well. The point is, the leaves were glossy and brilliantly colored and we were able to mound them into softly yielding mountains, at the end of October, in northern Massachusetts. Now, at the very beginning of October in New Jersey (and for the preceding September), they are either already on the ground, or turning brown.

These spruce were thin but green two weeks ago. Now they are turning yellow.

If they follow the path of others further along I have seen before, they will be completely bare by the time winter is over.

There isn't a single tree around this house that has anything approaching a healthy number of leaves. It looks more like November than the beginning of October.

I have had my eye on particular this tree since last year. It was one of the first to make me concerned that trees were suffering from some widespread ailment because its leaves were so wilted and droopy. Look at it now, one year later.

A climbing hydrangea with brittle and scorched leaves.

That spot of color on the left? Take a look at what is really going on.

Autumn leaves should be supple, and gorgeous; not turning withered and dead.

This is wild bittersweet. My mother used to wait until the berries burst, yellow outer shells opening like crisp petals around red centers, and then brought in cuttings to decorate the mantel for Thanksgiving. These leaves are a perfect example of the inability to photosynthesize and make chlorophyll that is essential for all plants to survive.

Don't ask me what is going to happen if this situation continues to deteriorate - which it appears, it will.

You won't like the answer.

FINALLY!

They've noticed - but haven't figured out why yet.

"We have a tree crew and they are very, very busy right now."

Cascading Synergy

from this article

I'm not certain if it means anything, but in this article, about Wisconsin suing the EPA, it says:

In June of 2000, the EPA announced a proposal to loosen regulations limiting evaporative characteristics of reformulated gasoline. It would maintain current use of ethanol as an oxygenate in reformulated gasoline, but allow for increased fuel volatility. This allowance would make RFG production easier for gasoline manufacturers and hopefully cause price reductions in the cost of reformulated gasoline, lessening the price difference between reformulated gasoline and conventional gasoline. This proposal was approved in the spring of 2001.

Thus, with these changes, reformulated gasoline would still be in use with the supposed benefit of reduced carbon monoxide emissions. The question arises as to whether or not the increased use of RFGs with a higher volatility will, in the long run, do more damage to the environment. The National Research Council indicated in its report, "the use of an ethanol-containing RFG with an RVP [Reid vapor pressure, a measure of fuel volatility] that is 1 psi higher than other RFG blends would be detrimental to air quality in terms of ozone"

yet another report says:

when ozone levels surpass a certain amount, the gas causes cellular damage inside the plant's leaves, and they become visibly damaged with brown splotches.

The ozone also reduces the rate of photosynthesis in the plant and cripples its ability to grow.

Gee, imagine that! And then there's this:

"In effect the cells have been disrupted...Essentially the photosynthetic apparatus has been damaged."

Such damage could cause large economic losses through reduced crop yields.

Ya think??? This video rambles a bit strangely, but it's interesting to watch.

Try this on for size - what the world will look like after we finish destroying it and ourselves through climaticide.

apocadocs had this link which reminds me, I agree with MindOverBlather, the scientists should reconsider their language and instead of COULD should say WILL as in this snippet!

"a cascading synergy of adverse climate-change effects could outrun snail-paced efforts to reduce of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels in power plants and transportation sources mostly in developed and developing nations."

We Are All Watermelon Now

Thanks to R. Pauli for sending me this link.

where I found this:

Figure 3. Ozone damage on watermelon; notice different degrees of yellowing and necrotic areas as the damage worsens from A through F. Photograph B looks very much like TSSM damage. Photographs courtesy of Gerald Holmes, NCSU Dept of Horticulture.

Yikes, does this look like everything everywhere, or what?! I will be spending days following all the links!

Here is a bit of a message to a friend,

...people cannot bear the pain. They will hold out until the last bitter moment. I am trying, with difficulty, to find a more cosmic, abstract, perhaps molecular meaning to life than what I have always yearned for and delighted in - music, paintings, dance, sex!, food, affectionate pets, FAMILY, starry nights, BOOKS, tears and laughter...

This may well all come down to chemistry at its most basic, and not much else.

To which R. Pauli commented: "But really, what makes humans worth obsessing about?"

We are just big, smart amoebas with finite lives, about to pass along.

the letter that started the nursery notice

I sent the letter copied below to a number of nurserymen and farmers, who had authored articles in a local newsletter. It appears to have generated some response, although not directly to me, even though I welcome any discussion on this topic. We all need food to eat. Following is my message, to the authors, from last week:

I picked up a copy of Gardener News and notice that many articles are unwittingly describing the effects of gasoline emission poisoning on vegetation. These effects mimic the symptoms of drought, blight, excess rainfall and fungus but are in fact also well-documented to be produced by exposure to atmospheric toxins.

Just because the gasses produced by burning coal, gasoline and ethanol are invisible, it does not mean they are not deadly. The scorched and falling leaves, thin tree crowns and forest canopies, bare branches, and dropping pine needles are ubiquitous in New Jersey and up and down the Eastern Seaboard. The hundreds of trees that were damaged recently in a thunderstorm in New York's Central Park was not from mere weather - the trees are weak, and they are covered with a lichen that is a harbinger of death.

It's quite likely that the relatively sudden and dramatic decline in trees is a result of the mandated addition of ethanol to gasoline.

It's well known that burning gasoline emissions react to UV radiation, creating ozone. It's less well recognized that ozone is very detrimental to plants - and even less discussed is that the damage from ethanol may be worse. Ethanol emits acetaldehyde which is the precursor to peroxyacetyl nitrates (PANS), that are highly dangerous to vegetation (and people: see http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/ClimateHealth4.pdf)

Before attributing this widespread and universal damage to individual diseases, excessive rain, pests, previous drought, and other blights on vegetation, which is what foresters, ecologists, and conservationists usually do, please consider this fact: the leaves of plants in ponds show the identical process of chloration - a loss of the ability to create chlorophyll. In the classic response to ozone and PANS, the leaves close their stomata, basically causing the organism to suffocate.

I would like to direct you to this report http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/430/430-022/430-022.html which describes exactly the condition of vegetation in New Jersey. I would question two statements that I believe may be out of date - one is that some species are more susceptible than others. Currently, it's impossible to find any species that isn't affected. The other is that PANS are less of a problem than ozone.

The evidence of this phenomena is readily detectable in an objective, cursory inventory of any woods, park, back yard, farm, arboretum, mall parking lot, pond, or nursery. It is irrefutable that the composition of the atmosphere is the primary causative agent for what is rapidly becoming an existential threat. Note that there is not one species that normally photosynthesizes that is immune, and that trees of every spectrum of age, and plants in every situation, whether wild or in nurseries, in pots or ponds or in the ground, share the same degree of impact.

If we do not stop squandering fuel we are headed straight for ecosystem collapse and mass extinctions, not to mention crop losses.

I am not a chemist but if it could be determined to be primarily linked to ethanol, we can consider ourselves lucky. We could stop this wholesale slaughter of trees and go back to the slower path of destruction through climate change.

You who are directly involved in agriculture and landscaping should be in the forefront demanding that the government take swift and strong action to enact clean energy legislation, because it is your livelihood that is at stake. Of course everybody who eats, and every species that depends on trees for fruit, nuts, shelter, and shade has everything to lose as well. But you will be the first to be impacted when your crops fail to produce adequate income for you, and people and businesses give up purchasing and planting shrubs and saplings in their landscapes because it will be a waste of money. Eventually they will notice that nothing they install will thrive.

Please fell free to write or call if there is anything I can clarify; and/or visit www.witsendnj.blogspot.com where there are many links to scientific research, and photos documenting the carnage.

Sincerely,

Gail Zawacki

Oldwick, NJ

The Overpopulation Canard

These two say it best, here and here.